Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
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Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (December 23, 1804 – October 13, 1869) was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.
On Sade an Byron as forebears of the moderns
- "I would dare affirm, without fear of being contradicted, that Byron and Sade (I beg pardon for mentioning them in the same sentence) have perhaps been the two greatest inspirers of our moderns, the one visibly advertised and displayed as such (affiché et visible), the other in a clandestine manner, yet not too clandestine. In reading certain of our writers (romanciers) now in vogue, never forget this key if you wish to get to the bottom of the treasure-chest and discover the secret stairway to the well-hidden boudoir." --July 1843, Revue des deux mondes
Sainte-Beuve and New Criticism
One of Sainte-Beuve's major critical contentions was that in order to understand an artist it was first necessary to understand that artist's biography (a reversed opinion of New Criticism). Marcel Proust took issue with this contention and began an essay meant to refute it. Proust's essay eventually developed into À la recherche du temps perdu, ironically a very autobiographical work.
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